Philips NINO 300 – my indispensable personal organiser (Philips Nino 300)

Member Name: libertybell

Product:	Philips Nino 300
Date:	05/10/00 (842 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Compact, less messy than using paper, can sync with a PC

Disadvantages: No proper keyboard, colour screen would be nice, no MP3 facility and they are not cheap!

I must admit I do like gadgets whether they are mobile phones, CD/MP3 players or personal organisers. Last year, I went through a phase of wanting to get a better grip over organising myself at work. Time for a gadget I thought & after a week or 2 of deliberations – I purchased a Philips Nino 300.

The Nino is palm sized though it is quite a thick machine. You write on it using a plastic stylus supplied with it. There are a number of ways to write numbers or letters. One way is to ‘draw’ the character, which is then converted by the Nino into the required character. Another way is to bring up a little keyboard image at the base of the screen and to tap the numbers/letters to make them appear on the screen. If you want to be flash, you can assign voice commands to certain functions – though this one is more appropriate for exhibitionists. Can you imagine talking to a Nino on a train!

My Nino has a comprehensive address book where I can record all sorts of information about people from the basic name and address; through to phone numbers and email addresses/web sites. These details can be synchronised with Microsoft Outlook – more about that later.

Another useful function is the Calendar. If you are familiar with Outlook, it’s very similar. With it, you can set up appointment for particular hours in a day or for all day. The appointment can be a one-off or recurring. Your calendar can be viewed in an annual, monthly or daily format. An interesting feature is the use of little circles to indicate how much free time is available. The more of the circle coloured black – the less free time available. An appointment can also be set-up to remind you in advance either as a message or an alarm.

Then there are tasks. Again, very similar in format to tasks on Outlook.

Once of the worst problems with having a personal organiser is losing it or the battery going flat. At a stroke, you can lose a
ll your ‘life history’. The Nino gets around this by synchronising with a host PC and recharging the battery in 1 go. If a battery goes flat, the data can be reloaded onto the Nino.

Other features my Nino has is the ability to compose and send emails, they are only actually transmitted if ‘synching’ with the host PC or connected to a mobile phone.

It also has a calculator, and a few games to play when bored.

Although my Nino is invaluable, they’re a number of things, which do irritate me. I wish it had a colour screen. Mine is a greeny colour. I also wish mine had some sort of built in MP3 player/radio – though I am sure the latest models do have this facility. A proper keyboard would also be nice to speed up getting the text into the machine – you can only scribble so fast. And finally, versions of excel and Word would be useful.

I think my Nino is invaluable and would be lost without it. An electronic organiser suits me fine and I would never go back to a paper based address book, calendar and to do list. I would love to replace it with a modern version, but at the price of a new one – I really cannot justify it at present.

Summary: